Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 7th, 2016

[Margaret Connell]

My gosh.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

It's okay. You're down to five seconds—

[Margaret Connell]

Can I just finish my sentence?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Of course you can. This isn't a dictatorship at this committee, you know.

[Margaret Connell]

Thank you. My goodness, I can't imagine what I was like in a classroom.

The idea that we would have a referendum, and people who don't know what they're voting for would get up there and make a decision, makes no sense.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll hear from Ms. Sansom.

[Brenda Sansom, As an Individual]

I didn't have anything to say until I met Elizabeth May and she told me I had to speak, so now I have something to say.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Brenda Sansom]

Actually, when I was six I met John Diefenbaker, and today I met Elizabeth, and last year I did the twist with Chubby Checker, so I'm having a really good life

I have had the privilege of serving on municipal council for the City of Fredericton and being a deputy mayor for nine years. For six of those, I was the only female on council, so when I hear talk about how we can have better representation by women, I'm definitely in favour of it.

However, I'm also a teacher, and I firmly believe there is absolutely no way Elections Canada or this government or any school system has the ability to sufficiently inform a public about something as complicated as the proportional vote so that they could make an informed decision.

As a consequence, after listening to everyone today, I believe that we elect leaders to make decisions, the easy ones and the hard ones. If I were to be asked whether I think we should have a referendum, I, Monsieur Alain, would say, zero. I really believe that we need to be educated about it, but the difficult decision needs to be made by the government and I don't think there's a process in place that could sufficiently inform our public. I think you only have to look at Brexit, and look at the referendum we just had in Colombia.

I'll talk to Pat Lynch afterwards, by the way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay, thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Kirby.

[J.P. Kirby, As an Individual]

Thank you and good afternoon.

My name is J.P. Kirby, and I run election-atlas.ca. I support electoral reform as I believe that first past the post is not compatible with the multi-party reality of this country. With that in mind, I believe that any reform of the system should revolve around four basic concepts: that the results should be proportional; regional representation should be ensured; there should not be separate classes or tiers of MPs; and the ballot and process should remain as simple as possible.

I have submitted a proposal that I believe meets all four of these criteria: an open-list, multi-vote, PR system. Most of the country outside northern or remote areas will be divided into multi-member districts. Each party could nominate up to a full slate of candidates and each voter would have as many votes on the ballot as members could be elected. The party results would be totalled up and seats distributed based on a standard PR formula with the individual vote totals for each candidate determining which members are elected.

This puts control completely in the hands of the voters. For instance, voters who like a local candidate, but not his or her party, can split their ballot as many ways as they wish. There will not be any need for a pre-ranked list, like in multi-member systems. The simplicity of marking an X on the ballot will remain in place, unlike in STV.

My calculations have determined that, depending on the formula used, the seat total for each of the major parties in the last federal election could have fallen within three percentage points of their popular vote total. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to discuss it further here, but I have submitted a brief that explains this proposal in more detail, which you can read on the committee website.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much. Indeed, it will be translated and posted. It's already there? Great.

We'll hear from Stephanie Coburn.

[Stephanie Coburn, As an Individual]

First of all, thank you for coming to the best-kept secret in the country. I think we have the most beautiful province in the country, and hardly anybody knows about it. Now that you've seen it in its glory, you can all come back sometime.

The first thing I want to say is that I am a citizen. I am not a stakeholder, nor am I a client of the government. I'm a citizen and I get to vote and I would like my vote to count. To me, counting would mean that if a party gets 39% of the vote, they get 39% of the seats. If they only get 39% of the seats, they wouldn't be a majority government.

I don't have any empirical evidence to prove that a coalition government would be more effective and produce better legislation. I just have a feeling, being a person who seeks co-operation instead of confrontation and really doesn't like the political partisanship that gets in the way of intelligent discussion and good decision-making, that the better the intention of the people around the table is toward coming to common decisions and approaching something intelligently rather than with partisanship, then the better the decision-making we'd have at the end of it all.

That's what we're looking for. We're looking for really intelligent people to be thoughtfully thinking about the entire country. You're the government of the entire country. You have regional interests, but you're supposed to be looking at the health of the entire polis here in Canada. Partisanship really gets in the way of that, I find.

I have been a candidate four times, twice provincially and twice federally. The most dispiriting thing that happens is when I go to a door and somebody says, “Why would I vote? My vote doesn't count.”

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Okay, Mr. Willman, go ahead.

[Mat Willman, As an Individual]

I'll make this very short.

It's often said that the Liberal government got 40% of the vote. That's not true; they got 27%. Why? It's because they got 27% of 68% of the votes. Not 100% of Canadians voted; 68% did. That's not a majority. That's not even close to 40%.

If we don't institute compulsory voting alongside proportional representation, we will still end up with a minority of the electorate working the machinery of government. If we implement compulsory voting, then we will have made sure that the government has heard from 100% of the voters, because that is what an election is, a public opinion poll.

We cannot have a complete view of how Canadians really feel if we leave out over one-third of voters. If, under compulsory voting, 40% of voters voted Liberal, then 40% of Canadians who voted wanted Liberal ideas. Combined with proportional representation, it would equal 40% of the seats and 40% of the power.

However, the ballot must also have the ability for voters to mark “none of the above” so even apathetic voters can still have a voice. If we had 100 people in a room and 27 claimed they could make all the decisions and claimed it was democratic, there would be a riot. What, then, makes us think that 27% of voters giving 100% of the power to a party is democratic either? It's not, and it's dangerous.

In regard to whether there should be a referendum, to quote Margaret Thatcher, “No. No. No.” It's clear and simple.

Second, to quickly promote my preference for an electoral system, it would be mixed member proportional, because we would keep our regional—

Can I finish my sentence?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Of course, yes.

[Mat Willman]

We would keep our regional member of Parliament, but it would not affect the proportionality of the votes, so it is the best of both worlds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Is MMP what you were...?

[Mat Willman]

Yes, MMP.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Is there a George Maicher? No?

Okay. Renée Davis is next.

[Renée Davis, As an Individual]

First of all, thank you all for being here, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I'd like to echo what a lot of people said earlier. I hope this is our last.... Well, we've seen our last first-past-the-post election. I think it led to, as many people have said, feelings of lost votes, disengagement, and a lot of strategic voting, none of which, I think, are very healthy for our country.

I'm not fully sure what I would recommend as the best system of proportional representation. I think the committee will make a wise decision. I'm trying to become as informed as I can.

I'm also very open to the idea of making voting mandatory. I think there is a lot of merit in that. I think it will increase engagement. I also think it would be very worthwhile to reduce the voting age. That would add to more engagement, which is really essential. I would like to see our government become more representative and more co-operative.

I thank you again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Ms. Robbins.

[Wendy Robbins, As an Individual]

Thank you all for being here.

I teach Canadian literature. I'm one of the founders of gender and women's studies here at UNB Fredericton. I'm very pleased to have Matt as my MP and Joanna Everitt as my colleague. I thought I would just say a few words.

If you want to see more of Joanna, she's actually one of three stars in a film that was locally made. You'll remember the name if you think of “democracy” but put in an “m” instead of the “d”. The film is called Menocracy.

You can see where I'm going. I told you I teach gender and women's studies.

Menocracy.ca will get you to her website. Gretchen Kelbaugh is formerly from Fredericton and is now from Quispamsis. The film was made before the last election, so it's as if Stephen Harper is our prime minister and as if we've only had 19 majority governments, of which he says only four were true majorities. From what our colleagues said, that's in doubt now, too, in my mind.

I'm undecided as to which system to choose. I certainly have a preference, not for the how but definitely for the who. It's absolutely imperative, because it's 2016 and counting, that we have more representation of all of the under-represented groups. The largest group is women. I think it's amazing; I didn't expect to see, in my lifetime, a black American president or a gender-balanced Canadian federal cabinet. My students are in awe of all of the changes that are happening. We're of course watching the debate on Sunday night too, hoping for an American woman president.

There is a lot of research. I have the dubious distinction of being the last director of research at the former Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. There's oodles of research going back to the 1990s, and much more that's current, including from the Harvard Business Review. Anywhere you look, one of the Harvard Business Review short summaries says, “How do you make a team smarter? Add more women.” You probably know that one. It's true in so many ways. It's a question of diversity, different perspectives. People see different things, pick up on different things, find the loopholes in different things.

I mean, you are an absolute model of how it works, with all the different perspectives here. I just hope we can bring that kind of attitude to our Parliament and have people feel that they're all part of an all-star team when they get there and that they're not just representing a particular region or party.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Mr. Wright.